Access to and control of valuable and/or dangerous items, such as narcotics for example, needs to be carefully monitored, tracked, and controlled to assure against unauthorized access to or assure that proper and appropriate accesses catalogued and monitored. Other items, such as jewelry and coins, have inherent intrinsic value such that it is important for retailers to keep track of access to and location of such items, while keys, such as keys to vehicles, have value because they provide access to other valuable objects such as automobiles and trucks or storage devices. There accordingly is a need to be able to track, catalogue access to, monitor and control such objects in a way that is reliable, simple to implement, and virtually tamper proof.
In the past, a variety of systems have been implemented to track and control objects. In the case of keys in an automobile dealership, for example, pegboards have been used to keep track of the keys as sales persons, maintenance personnel, and others remove keys for access to vehicles. Generally, sign out sheets have been used to log the check-in and checkout of such keys. Obviously, such a manual system of tracking has numerous shortcomings due in large part to the very real potential of human error and forgetfulness in carrying out the sign-in and sign-out procedures and the inability to monitor how long the keys are out of the storage repository and who has the keys.
More recently, automated computer controlled key tracking systems have been implemented for tracking, for example, vehicle keys at car lots and keys to the apartments of apartment complexes. One such system particularly applicable to the present invention is the key tracking system disclosed and claimed in my U.S. Pat. No. 5,801,628 the disclosure of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
In this system, referred to herein as the “Key Track” system, disclosed and claimed in my U.S. Pat. No. 5,801,628 keys to a vehicle are attached with a rivet or the like to a thin plastic key tag or card having a depending tongue. The tongue carries a small button shaped electronic touch memory device, which stores the ID code. The tongues of the key tags are configured to be insertable in an array of slots formed in a panel within a storage drawer. A printed circuit backplane is disposed beneath the array of slots and is provided with a plurality of pairs of metal contacts, with each pair of contacts being aligned with a corresponding one of the slots. When the tongue of a key card is inserted in a selected one of the slots, its touch memory device is engaged by the corresponding pair of contacts.
A computer based controller is electronically coupled through a data matrix to the contacts on the back plane and periodically polls each pair of contacts, preferably several times per second, to determine the presence or absence of a touch memory device and thus which slots contain key cards and which do not. When a slot contains a key card, the touch memory device of the tag is read to determine its unique code, from which the identity of the particular key attached to the card can be determined through a table lookup. In this way, the absence or presence in location of the key cards and their associated keys can be noted by the controller each time the array of contacts are polled. If a card present in a slot on a prior polling is absent on a subsequent polling, then the controller notes that the card and its key has been removed from the storage drawer. Conversely, if a key card is detected in a previously empty slot, the controller notes that the card and its key have been replaced in the storage drawer. The removal and replacement of keys is therefore continuously monitored.
An access feature requires an authorized user such as a sales person to enter an I.D. code to unlock and access the storage drawer. When the history of removal and replacement of key cards and their keys is combined with other information, such as the time at which cards are removed and replaced and the identities of the person who accessed the drawer and times of access, access to the keys in the drawer can be controlled and a detailed tracking log can be created. This system greatly decreases instances of lost keys, reduces the time required to find checked-out keys, and generally provides automatic tracking and control of the keys, and thus, to a large extent, controls and tracks the vehicles to which they provide access.
While the Key Track system described above has proven extremely successful and valuable in the tracking and control of keys, it nevertheless has certain shortcomings. For example, currently, the system is unable to determine if any of the checked out keys was actually used and if so, for how long. In many applications where this system is to be used, i.e., for armored car companies, the user or “route-man” typically may not know ahead of time exactly every stop he will hive to make. Consequently, these users typically will need to take a set of keys, i.e., 10–20 or more, including one or more keys for each stop on their route, whether they will actually need all the keys or not. However, currently it is difficult lo track which specific ones of the keys of such a group or set were actually used while checked out and if so, for how long.
Thus, even though the Key Track system has proven very useful and successful, there exists a continuing need to enhance the system in such a way that the problems mentioned above are addressed in an efficient, economic, and reliable way. It is to the provision of such enhancements and improvements that the present invention is primarily directed.